Dickie era at COT ends with minimalist Mozart

Sitting through three different productions of "The Magic Flute" ("Die Zauberflote") in Chicago within only 10 months could leave even the most devout Mozartian with a bad case of musical indigestion.

On the other hand, an opera as richly varied in substance and expression as "Magic Flute" can abide any number of approaches. And Mozart's late masterpiece certainly has run the gamut locally: the spare new production that Chicago Opera Theater opened over the weekend, the lively concert version by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra last month at Ravinia and the revival of Lyric Opera's storybook staging last winter.

The COT version of "Magic Flute" seen Saturday night at the Harris Theater for Music and Dance actually marks the first new production Chicago audiences have witnessed in 17 years — sung in Jeremy Sams' effective English translation — and the company's first fall production in more than a decade.

More importantly, it represents the Chicago swan song of Brian Dickie, who retired in June as COT's general director after a distinguished 13-year tenure that included several notable forays into Mozart. Dickie, who attended opening night, was duly lauded from the stage by his successor, Andreas Mitisek, and given an appreciative ovation by the audience.

Dickie was famous for his ability to identify up-and-coming vocal talent, along with his remarkable knack for putting on quality work within shoestring budgets. Both attributes are evident here, though less consistently than in the past. You had to wonder what might have been had conductor Jane Glover and director Diane Paulus not withdrawn before adding "Magic Flute" to their successful string of COT collaborations.

The challenge for stage directors doing "Magic Flute" is finding the right tonal balance between the singspiel's comic whimsy and its serious moral philosophizing. British director Michael Gieleta hedges his bets by pulling the poles closer together, resulting in a lack of dramatic focus.

Gieleta and his design team — James Macnamara (sets), Gregory Gale (costumes) and Julian Pike (lighting) — set "Magic Flute" in a galaxy far, far away. Planets of various sizes dangle above the stage, the Milky Way looms in the background and the lighting is kept as dim as possible — until the brilliantly lit arrival of the high priest Sarastro and his retinue, looking like Buddhist monks in saffron robes. For no particular reason, Monostatos, Sarastro's servant, is done up as a bully boy, banana-republic military dictator, attended by khaki-clad soldiers.

The budget-enforced minimalism that has long been a COT hallmark makes for relatively little stage magic here. The trials of fire and water that our hero and heroine, Prince Tamino and Princess Pamina, must undergo before joining the temple brotherhood suffer accordingly: Tamino must wrestle with what appears to be the same illuminated serpent that bedevils him at his entrance.

Fortunately the baton is in the capable hands of British conductor Steuart Bedford, who Saturday drew fine playing from the chamber orchestra and good singing from the chorus of apprentices. The judicious pacing and sense of refinement that have long served him in the Benjamin Britten operas did so in Mozart as well.

Two performances by gifted young American singers lifted this "Magic Flute" out of the ordinary, vocally speaking.

Tenor Sean Panikkar cut a handsome, credible figure and sang with sweetness, clarity and thrust as Tamino. As the Queen of the Night, soprano Emily Hindrichs nailed her first aria, later bringing down the house with her brilliant account of her Act 2 showpiece. Her coloratura flashed like a tiara of fine-cut diamonds.

Soprano Elizabeth Reiter's Pamina needed to display more charm and pathos, and her singing was uneven — lustrous in the midrange but rather hard and edgy on top, her vibrato widening disconcertingly by the end.

Baritone Markus Beam's Papageno was sturdily sung, but depriving the character of much of his comic shtick made the bird catcher less endearing than normal. Tenor Alex Mansoori, repeating his lively Monostatos from Ravinia, suffered similar comedic deprivation, but his singing again was spot on.

Russian bass Grigory Soloviov made a dignified Sarastro, even if his accent made his spoken lines hard to follow and he lacked deep resonance at the low end of his music. Bruce Hall brought immense authority to the small role of the Speaker, and there were worthy contributions in supporting roles from present and former members of the COT young artists program. The cast's generally splendid diction made the use of English surtitles almost superfluous.